Most of the world is suffering in a chronic state lacking fresh drinking water. This leads to a shortage of water for agriculture, which makes it expensive or impossible to grow crops effectively. Increased need for water conservation in recent years has led to higher food prices and higher costs for farmers and consumers alike. The need for conservation has stemmed from higher demands on food production and higher population bases in localized areas. Water authorities around the United States, and the world are enacting watering limits and water usage expectations to ensure the valuable resource is being used carefully. In addition to agricultural needs, residential, sporting and landscaping all consume water at an alarming rate. It has been shown that in commercial crops, the amount of water used will greatly affect the profitability of the farm and therefore farmers are economically motivated to use the water carefully. Residential users of water are also motivated to conserve water for economic reasons.
It would be desirable therefore to have an innovative sensor technology such that an accurate watering regime can be constructed to optimize the use of this precious resource. By adding a wireless capability to the sensor, large areas can be monitored and optimized at extremely low costs, thereby improving the production of food and other agricultural products. Since it is clear that water conservation is important for society, this invention describes a method and apparatus to be able to enable optimal water usage for a given landscape or crop. Choosing crops with lower water requirements, or landscapes with lower water requirements are alternative methods to reduce water usage. The subject of this invention is to, for a given crop or landscape, enable the water user to reduce the water usage to the optimal point and therefore minimize the cost of water, or optimize the yield in the growing of commercial food crops.
In order to enable this ability several pieces of technology are necessary. Some of the technology has been developed and some of the technology is the subject of this invention. In order to optimize cost further, technology choices were made to enable the optimal cost structure. Other choices could yield similar results in terms of water usage and therefore could still result in significant savings for the user, however they would not yield the ideal cost savings.